This important and provocative paper is being presented this morning to the IWU colloquium where 500 religion students take a half-day off and along with their professors discuss an issue important to the church’s future.  Today’s topic is “Short Term Missions” and many will be responding especially to this very provocative paper by Jim Lo.  Every church and every youth pastor in America should read this paper—especially if they ever plan to put together a mission team.  Even if they decide to have a mission team after reading this paper, they’ll have a far different one I bet.  Jim Lo has said in this paper what mission leaders, missionaries, and denominational leaders have been afraid to say for fear of alienating their giving constituency.   He is gutsy to say these things… and most of the readers won’t like them.  But I is right.  (and it is only half the story).  –Keith Drury 

 

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Click here to respond (or read other responses) to this important paper

 

Concerns Regarding Short-Term Missions

 

Rev. Dr. Jim “Umfundisi” Lo+

 

            Short-term missions.  Some have referred to it as the “amateurization of mission.” Others have labeled it “drive-by missions.”  Missiologists trace the phenomenon to 1960 when George Verwer of Operation Mobilization (OM) and Loren Cunningham of Youth With A Mission (YWAM) founded their agencies on the premise that short-term missions would advance God’s kingdom and change the participants’ lives.
            Verwer’s zeal was inspired by his own mission trip.  "Three of us went to Mexico for a few weeks, and we have never been the same.  Two of us have been in career missions ever since." 

            Ask career missionaries what they think about short-term missions, and one will get a spectrum of opinions.  Some think they are great; others are willing to tolerate them; and there are those who detest them.  Whatever one's feelings may be, one cannot deny their popularity.  Many church goers in the United States who have been on short-term mission trips love them.  From a handful of people who were involved each year a half century ago, short-term missions now draw upwards of 500,000  Americans each year.1  Peterson, Aeschliman and Sneed in their book, Maximum Impact Short-Term Mission (STEMPress:Minneapolis, 2003), say there are now at least one million going out each year into short-term mission service (p. 243). 

            Is this a good thing?  My immediate  response is “No”.  Granted, it has had some good effects on those going and for their home churches but overall I feel  this explosion of short term missions has had a negative effect on intercultural ministries itself.   To be honest, I have mixed feelings regarding short-term missions, even though for the past ten years I have been seen to be its promoter at this university.  Its  popularity has concerned me deeply.  Evangelical Missions Quarterly published an article I wrote entitled, “What have we done?”  I started the article with these words. 

   My brother-in-law, Andy, is a rancher.  One day he asked me to help him corral his cattle.  Enthusiastically, I agreed, honored that he was asking a “city slicker” to help him. My task was fairly simple.  I was to stand at the gate and open and close it while Andy, riding his horse, herded stray cattle in my direction.  There were already over 30 head of cattle in the corral.  As Andy rode off, a penned-up little calf moseyed over to me.  He was so cute, I wanted to stroke his head.  To do so, I needed to open the gate just a little.  How could that hurt anything?  Before I knew what was happening, however, all the other cattle began pushing their way out.

   When Andy returned to the empty corral, the cattle were running in every direction.  Looking at me, he shouted, “What have you done?”

 

            I am concerned that short-term missions, like the cattle described in the above article, has gotten out of hand.  Allow me to share thirteen concerns. 

 

1.  Wrong Motives

            Richard Slimbach, professor in the department of Global Studies and Sociology at Azusa Pacific University, contends that many short-term mission trips have become harmful because a growing number of team members are more attracted to the promised thrill of  travel and adventure than by the opportunity to learn from, and commit to, host community members.  The way some mission organizations advertise their trips feeds this wrong motive for being involved in short-term missions.  Listen to how some adverts promote short-term mission trips: 

            -Adventures in missions

            -Looking to add some adventure to your life?  Take part in a short-term mission trip. Visit exciting places and meet interesting people while sharing the Good News.

            -Have an experience you will never forget!  While you’re abroad, we offer fun-filled excursions.

            -Turkey Bible Land short term mission trip – Tour more Biblical sites than any other country – just for the fun of it.  This is NOT a work team.

            Kim Hurst, who coordinates the annual National Short-Term Mission Conference, says, "We should support all who are sincerely obeying Christ’s command to go and make disciples."  But Hurst contends that some short-term programs fall short of that aim.  "They are little more than ethno-tourism disguised as missions.”  How does she support this accusation?  She writes, “Too many short-term mission trips are  throwing in a lot of nice benefits because affluent Americans are used to a certain style of life.  They don’t want American volunteers to work too hard or get too dirty or not have time to go shopping.”

 

The motivation of “wrong”  service

            A national in Latin America asked the following questions:  Why do you  send volunteers out into the world to work for the poor when they could be working with the poor? Why would short-termers from America even consider going on mission trips if they do not  intend to work side-by-side with nationals?  We get frustrated being treated as objects of short-term mission trips rather than as joint subjects in a common enterprise of faith.  As far as we are concerned,  when short-term missionaries treat us as objects, they are not really involved in God’s mission.”

            Nationals in two third-world countries are also saying that it is time to quit treating volunteer short-term missionaries as spoiled children, and get them out of fancy hotels and into tents and dirt-floored chapels in the countryside and urban barrios.  Some short-term mission team leaders will argue that the reason they house short-termers in hotels is because they know they can’t push their team members that far out of their comfort zones.  But I contend that this kind of thinking must be re-thought.

            North Americans often go on mission trips seeking the emotional rewards of hands-on involvement rather than a way to make an investment in long-term empowerment.  The motive is to do things that will make the team feel good.  As an example,  a short-term  mission team from South Carolina came to El Estribo, a poor village in southern Honduras, and insisted on handing out $50 U.S. to each family (single mothers excluded), despite objections by local church workers.  When asked why they insisted on doing this, one member honestly answered, “because it makes  us feel as though we are doing something worthwhile as well as making us feel good.” 

 

The motivation of satisfying “self”

This past week IWU had their annual Missions Fest.  In one of my classes, the mission rep, describing his organization, stated, “We have a customized approach to missions.” When pressed to explain what he meant, he replied, “We seek to meet the needs and desires of the team.  Once we know what the team wants we try to place them in an area where they can have their desires met.”  As I sat there listening I thought, “What happened to the days when mission organizations wanted to know what the field needs were and then sought to form teams around those needs?  No longer are the needs of a field the starting point, but the needs of the team.  This seems backwards to me!”

One organization that I found on the internet promotes  their short term mission trips with the phrase, “90% draw closer to God”.  Another organization had this sentence in its promotional materials, “Mission trip options: 4 unique opportunities to grow your students/teens spiritually”.  Yes, many individuals have been changed through going on short term mission trips.  But if the goal is only to change their lives, then the ministry is self-centered indeed.

Self-centered team members often times do not  care if they destroy culture with their ethnocentric ways or insult nationals with their snide comments, since the aim is focused on what their own needs are.  Professor Steve Horst described it this way, “The nationals become the means to what the short termer wants at the end!”

 

The motivation of feeling successful

            Another wrong motive that some short-term missionaries have is seeking for visible accomplishments.  An IWU student wrote these thought-provoking words, “You ask, what should the purpose of short-term mission trips be, an extremely important question for us goal-oriented, task-obsessed Americans who are always looking to get something done.  Too often we consider the question of how efficient and how productive can I be today in regards to all of our actions.  While this can be a helpful method of ensuring success in tasks such as working in a factory or completing assignments, it is this very concept that can absolutely destroy missions.  How?  By its nature, this attitude trivializes people and interactions, causing short-termers to look at each national as a soul to conquer rather than a brother or sister to connect with.   (Justine Iskat “Response to “what have we done?'”)

            Personally, the incident that really got to me was when a short-termer took out his camera and asked another team member to take a picture of him holding the hands of  a poorly clad and dirty national child.  I would not have had a problem with this if he had been relating to the child, but he hadn’t been.  All afternoon long the short-termer had made no effort to interact with this child.  But when he wanted a good missionary picture, she became an important prop.  To get the “perfect picture,” he positioned her in different poses.  I found out later that he wanted to be able to show those in his church that he was a good ambassador of God’s love in another country. 

 

2.  Confusion about What Missions Is

            Years ago when people stated that they were going on a short-term mission trip, one could assume that they were going to go to a foreign country to do “missionary work.”  Today, it seems as though the meaning of  missions has become so encompassing that anything can be classified as missions.  One individual sent me his support letter asking me to help finance his hiking  trip in  Europe.  Someone else asked for money because she had signed up for an academic class that was to be taught in another country.  She tried to make it a legitimate short-term missions trip by informing me that they were planning to spend a few hours at an orphanage.  I scratched my head when I read this.  Spending two to three hours in an orphanage during a two-week academic trip seems to be a stretch.  The support letter that still causes me to chuckle is the one asking me to give money for the individual to go on a cruise.  The way he tried to make the voyage a legitimate missions trip was to inform me that during the course of the trip he was planning to be a witness for Christ by the way he behaved. 

 

What I would have classified as spiritual retreats years ago are now being advertised as mission trips.  What a set up.  No longer do the participants have to pay for their own way.  By identifying it as a missions trip others can be recruited to help pay for the experience. 

A missionary kid, writing about his experiences with short-term mission teams, wrote, “These teams most of the time wanted to be tourists, and it is annoying.  We, as missionaries, finally stopped allowing teams to come.”

The popularity of short-term missions has also changed the roles of some career missionaries drastically.  When I was asked to go to Cambodia to start up the ministry of Global Partners I was told that I was supposed to be involved in leadership development, as well as helping to plant new churches.  But very quickly I realized that my role would also include hosting short-term mission teams.  There were periods when one team would leave and another team would arrive within one or two days.  One missionary, being very candid, stated, “I was spending so much time taking care of the needs of teams that were coming to the field that I was falling  behind in my responsibilities to my primary ministries.” 

Some field workers and indigenous churches feel short-term teams are forced upon them. "National church leaders are too gracious to tell mission boards they do not want short-term teams," notes SIM missionary Leslie Pelt.  Some indigenous church leaders resent the lavish spending of short-termers.  "If [the cost of] one round-trip plane ticket could support six national evangelists for a year, is it right to send out a singing group of 40 high school students for two weeks?" asks Pelt.

            While I was a missionary in Africa,  I was visiting missionaries from a sister denomination.  As we were speaking, the mail man knocked on their door and gave them a registered letter.  As Larry opened up the letter I could see a look of frustration come over his face.  Speaking to no one in particular, he mumbled,  “Another team of tourists!  When are they going to send us people who really want to minister?”

Since I did not want to intrude into his thoughts, I got up from my seat and tried to take my leave by saying, “I should go.” 

            “Don’t leave, Jim!  I really need someone to talk to.  Sometimes I wonder if I am a missionary or a tour guide.”

            For the next two hours I sat listening to a deluge of frustrations.  It was not that he was opposed to short-term missions, but he was feeling as though many short-termers were really tourists and not missionaries.

            The letter he had received was telling him about a team who wanted to come visit him in Africa for two weeks.  It  included a list of things that they expected Larry to do to make their trip enjoyable.

1.Book rooms at the Holiday Inn for the  team.  The Inn had to have the following:

- air conditioned rooms

- a swimming pool to help the team members relax after a long day

- color televisions

- a restaurant that served “American” style food 

2.Rent a bus.  The bus had to be…

-air conditioned, since the weather in Zimbabwe can be very hot.

-comfortable to include padded seats.

3.Locate stores where the team members could buy African souvenirs.

-  Some of the team members were wanting to go to stores where they could buy Batiks, khaki-styled African shorts, spears, shields and copper wall hangings.

4.Arrange a trip for the team to go to Hwange Park, a wild game reserve.

 

Things that Larry was to avoid:

1.manual labour, since many on the team were older and retired.

2.long worship services, since Americans are not used to sitting for extended periods

3.churches which did not have chairs for the team members to sit on

 

3.  The Tension between Being Missional and Doing Missions

            I want to make it very clear that  I believe missions is important.  Our God is a God of mission, and as His people we are called be involved in missions as well.  But I think we may be confused regarding what that term, missions, actually means.  A large number in  the church view, express and practice “missions” as if it is an external activity; a duty to be fulfilled, a chore to be accomplished.  Missions is viewed as being a noun instead of what I would like to propose – an adjective.  “Missions” is not a task to be completed – to be done, so much as it is to be a way of being.  In other words, we are to be  “missional.”

            According to Scriptural passages, such as  God’s covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12 and  Jesus teachings about the Kingdom (Luke 4, 6, 8 etc.), the intended response to the movement of God by the people of God is to be blessings in the world.  Mission should be something that we “are,” and not something that we are “on.”  My thesis is that Christians are to be  the mission of God in the world.  In other words, the way we live is to be arranged around the movement of our God in the world.  In part, this means not just being missions-minded  for one week, or even for one year, while a person is on a mission field.  We are to be missional 24-7.
            In other words, there must be a  shift in perspective from “doing missions” to “being missional.”

Jesus told us  to “Go” in Mathew 28:19.  Like many, I have read this command as only being a command of action.  But I now believe that  Jesus was suggesting that His command to go was to be a way of life.  Missions needs to become something much bigger and more formative than simply a work project somewhere “out there” that we do once in awhile, when it is convenient for us.
 
4.  Lack  of  Preparation
A common phrase I hear any more among Christians is, “We are all missionaries.”  Yes, Christians are to be mission-minded.  They are to be concerned for the world and seek ways to spread God’s message of salvation to the lost.  However, many use the above phrase as a reason why they do not need to have any training to be short-term missionaries.  Too many are signing up for short-term mission trips without getting any training.  Their attitudes are summed up in the words of one believer who told me, “I do not need to be trained to be a missionary, since God has made me a missionary already.”

 

5.   The Focus on Numbers

            A short-term mission team went to Thailand.  When they returned to the States, they reported that over 125 Thai’s had become Christians.  When a mission-minded church heard this report, they wrote these words to the long-term missionaries who had been ministering in Thailand for many years, “We do not understand.  As we read over your yearly reports, we notice that the number of Thai’s becoming converts under your ministry is very low.  Your report shows that in three years you have seen only twenty-four Thai’s become Christians.  This does not make sense to us when we just heard from a short-term mission team that they were instrumental in seeing 125 people become Christians in a span of two weeks.  Unless you become more productive, we may have to stop supporting you financially and shift our funds to more productive missionaries.”

            A large church in the United States had taken on part of the support of a missionary couple being sent to work in a certain country.  Without conferring with the missionary couple, the mission committee of the church set up goals for the pioneer work.  In the first year the missionary couple was to have three congregations planted; by the third year, ten churches; and by the fourth year, 15 churches.  The missionary couple questioned the feasibility of the plan.  They shared, “Why, we don’t even know the language.  We are hoping to spend the first term learning how to communicate.  However, when they approached the chairperson of the mission committee to tell him what they thought, they were basically told, “Either produce or lose our support.” 

            One missionary commented, “We get pressure from some of our supporters to report success stories with numbers that accompany success.  Often we feel this pressure coming from larger churches.  It is almost as if they are thinking, ‘Since we are so productive, we expect our missionaries to also be productive.’  However, there are times when the numbers just aren’t there.  During these times I have been tempted to make up numbers just to ensure I obtain funds to support the ministry I am involved in.”  I asked some of my missionary colleagues the question:  Would you lie?  All of them answered “no,” though a majority of them did state that they have been tempted to. 

 

6.   How about Our Jerusalem?

            Jesus said, "You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem...and unto the ends of the earth." Jerusalem represents our own backyard.  It is counterproductive for a group to gear up every year for another glorious trip beyond their  borders, but then return home and fail to be involved in outreach ministries to those living in their Jerusalem.  Unless team members are   willing to invest in local ministries, they have no business going overseas.

            One must begin with Jerusalem.  See people through Jesus' eyes.  Compassion for the lost begins with those you see and touch every day.

 

7.   The Issue of Stewardship

The success of short-term missions is a  product of a particularly wealthy and mobile historical context.  In 1999  I took my family and seven students to do missionary work with me in Zimbabwe, Africa.  My heart pounded with excitement as our kombie got closer to Bethesda Mission, located in the bush, at least forty kilometers from Victoria Falls.  I had been told that many of the Christians I had ministered to would be waiting for us at the church.  As we drove into the mission we could see our African brothers and sisters waiting for us outside the church.  The one to give the first words of welcome was Umfundisi Elias Moyo.  But he was not the man I remembered him being.  In the four years since I had seen him, he had gotten older and more frail.  He had also become blind.  After he gave his greetings to the group, we sat down and spent a long time in conversation.  Somewhere in the course of our time of fellowshipping Moyo commented, “Your American students must be very rich.  I estimate it must have cost each one of them $10,000 Zimbabwe dollars to get here.  How I wish I could have had just a small percentage of that money a few months ago to buy medicines for my eyes.  The medicine may have prevented me from going totally blind.  You Americans have so much, while we Africans, still, have so little.” 

As I sat there a heavy burden weighed upon my heart.  Though Moyo had not asked the question, I knew what he was thinking, “Wouldn’t it have been better to send money to help national Christians instead of using the funds to finance our own short-term mission trip?”   For eleven team members to go to Africa, it cost a total of  $22,000 US.  That translates to $110,000 (Zim).  No wonder Reverend Moyo saw that as a lot of money.  The highest salary he ever got being a pastor was $50 (Zim) for an entire month. 

As I have already stated,  I have been a  strong voice at my university, promoting short-term mission trips.  But of late I have been filled with deep feelings of guilt.  These feelings have been fanned to a higher intensity this past year when I was receiving letters and emails from career missionaries pleading for funds in order to be able to stay on the field.  One couple shared that, due to lack of donations towards their support, they feared they would not be able to pay the rent for their apartment.  Another couple wrote that, because giving had dwindled so much, they were being told by their mission board that they would have to return to the States, in the middle of their term, to do fund raising. 

 

Short-term missions truly has become the “in thing,” but I believe this has been to the detriment of career missions.  This past year students at the university where I teach raised over $250,000 to go on university-sponsored short-term mission  trips.  That is a lot of money.  Could that money have been better used to support career missionaries?  I have also heard about a church which sets up a mission budget every year.  Last year they budgeted $30,000 for missions; $10,000 was to be used for people in the church who desire to go on short-term mission trips.  This seems like a lot of money to be spending on “ourselves” when some career missionaries are struggling just to make ends meet. 

 

8.  Forming Unhealthy Dependency

            An issue that most mission boards do not seem to want to talk about is the relationship between short-term mission service and the possibility of creating unhealthy dependency. 

            Whether short-term missionaries recognize it or not,  paternalism sometimes creeps into the heart of Western altruism, and perhaps even more often into the demeanor of missionaries.  There isn’t time to develop it here, but  I will just mention it in passing.  Many short-termers cannot imagine how our benevolence or altruism could possibly be at the root of the dependency syndrome.  After all, we use money to solve so many of our own problems.  Furthermore, we get such a good tingly feeling from giving that we may not even realize when paternalism creeps in.  Some time ago, a missionary friend of mine challenged a team on what was clearly paternalism.  The  response he received was classic.  He said, “How can you accuse me of paternalism?  I treated them like my own children!  I can’t believe they didn’t appreciate it!”

 

9.  Wrong Perceptions

            Glenn Swartz, a fellow missionary in Zimbabwe, Africa, told the following story about a group of Americans and Canadians who came to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia), where I lived and worked.  About four weeks into their six-week visit, the group suddenly left.  He heard about their premature departure and went to the building site to ask what happened.  Since they were from North America, he thought it was good to learn why they left early.  The local builder in charge of the project gave the following explanation:  What the Americans didn’t know is that we here in Africa also know how to build buildings.  It isn’t that they didn’t work hard.  The trowel was too slow to put mortar between the bricks, so they used their bare hands to speed things up.  But they must remember that we built buildings before they came, and we will build buildings after they leave.  Unfortunately, while they were here, they thought they were the only ones who knew how to build buildings. Finally, things got so bad that we had to ask them to leave.  Obviously this short-term mission was counter-productive to “building goodwill between the youth of two nations.”  Ironically, when I visited the site some months later, after the building was complete, there was a bronze plaque beside the entrance saying, “This building was built by the youth of Southern Rhodesia, the United States and Canada to foster goodwill between the nations.” Sadly, it had fallen short of its goal. 

 

10.  Lack of Incarnational Ministry

            Short-term missions does more harm than good when the size of mission teams becomes so large that it is forced to set up separate and self-sustaining social structures that exist as foreign enclaves within the local community. 

            Some proponents of short-term missions may feel that  I am stuck in the past, but I feel that too many short-term missionaries reflect standards of living much higher than the nationals they are ministering to.  Please understand, I am not suggesting that they need to exist at the same level if they are ministering in “poorer, primitive” areas, but I do believe they can lower their standards.  As an example, the use of cameras can be so dividing.  My suggestion to  one team I was sharing with was, instead of everyone bringing a camera on the trip, only one camera be allowed, which could be shared by all the team members.  The reactions I got back were revealing.  “What, not bring my camera!  Are you crazy!”  “No one is going to stop me from bringing my camera and I will take what ever **** pictures I want!”

“I’m glad you’re not my team leader.  I don’t like dictators!”

            Too many short-term missionaries, without meaning to, are importing their Western ways.  Why would I say this?  Look at the number of short-term missionaries who can not seem to survive one or two weeks without their niceties.

            I have seen nationals having to hire a truck to haul the heavy, bulky luggage that short-term missionaries have brought with them, even after I had begged the team members to down-size.

            I have seen team members pack into their suitcases hair driers, CD players, DVD players, curling irons, electric fans, computer games, American-produced coffee, just to list a few things that I feel they should have left at home. 

 

            I have also heard new missionaries being told by those supervising them that learning the language of the people is no longer important since most people want to learn to speak English.  I have no doubt that there are many who want to speak English, but I have found that nationals still love to hear their “heart  language” being spoken.   

            Incarnational ministry includes learning the communication styles of nationals on the field.  I have seen too many short-termers ignore doing this.  As an example, I have observed short-term missionaries use certain illustrations, or wear certain things, that do not communicate the same message in the place they are visiting.  I like the account of the missionary who enlisted a national to interpret for an American preacher.  The preacher was told not to use jokes, since they did not apply to the culture.  In the middle of his sermon, however, the preacher told a joke anyway.  The national interpreter told the congregation, “The preacher is telling an American joke.  If I told you, you would not understand it.  But if you want to make him happy, when I count to three, then laugh!”

 

11.  Imposing  Western Culture

            The South African missiologist David Bosch contends that the advocates of missions and short-term missions (my addition) are blind to their own ethnocentrism.  They confuse their middle-class ideals and values with the tenets of Christianity.  Their views about morality, respectability, order, efficiency, individualism, professionalism, work, and technological progress are, without compunction, being exported to the ends of the world.  He writes that they are “predisposed not to appreciate the cultures of the peoples whom they go to…turning people into objects and reshaping the world into the image of the West.”  In other words, short-term missionaries are often  unaware of the pagan flaws of their own culture.  Because of this, they tend to exude a benevolent paternalism that is not healthy for those they go to minister to. 

            Stan May, in his article, “Short term mission trips are great, if….” described the following.

   After the brilliant sun set in the Zimbabwe sky, the cooler night air forced the locals, a missionary, and several preachers just arrived from America indoors.  The best seats along the wall of the imba were offered and taken, food was brought, and talk began around the table. One of the American guests, noting that the host’s wife was obviously with child, began to ask pointed questions about the pregnancy.

   A noticeable quiet descended.  Excusing himself, the missionary took the volunteer from the States outside and explained the women and men did not discuss these things in this society; to do so was rude.  The short termer  persisted, arguing that this was the “20th century”.  The missionary urged the man to accept the society as he found it, but the volunteer muttered in front of the national brethren, “I’ll drag them kicking and screaming into the 20th century.” 

 

One volunteer’s “wisdom” nullified, not only all that he had hoped to accomplish, it tainted much of the short-term missionary’s labor.

 

12.  A Truncated Understanding of Evangelism

            At the First International Consultation on Discipleship, John Stott spoke about a “strange and disturbing paradox” of the contemporary Christian situation.  Even though the Church is experiencing enormous statistical growth, corresponding growth in discipleship is lacking.  Stott then gave this warning, “God is not pleased with superficial discipleship.”

One African theologian, Tobunboh Adeyemo, describing the paradox of what short- term missions is producing, wrote, “The church we have ….is one mile long, but only one inch deep.”

I sense that too many short-term missionaries have an incomplete view of evangelism.  Their reading of the Great Commission is truncated, in that their understanding of evangelism is limited to only one aspect – evangelism is going and preaching the Gospel in order that sinners would say the penitent’s prayer to become Christians.  Though this is a part of evangelism, it is not the only part.  Evangelism must also include discipleship—helping new Christians to become established in the faith and also helping them to be equipped for works of service.  Failing to include all the components of evangelism is similar to parents who give birth to children, but who are not willing to take care of them and nurture them.

Perhaps part of the reason short-termers  like the “soul-winning” part of evangelism is because the results are more easily obtained and observed.  One short-termer explained why he liked the soul winner part  by bluntly saying, “Because the evangelist is the one who gets the most recognition!” 

 Another said, “Discipling someone can take so long.  This is even true with equipping.  But evangelism is quick…it seems to  take less effort.” 

Short-termers need to be reminded of what James Kennedy said years ago, “It takes 5% effort to get a person saved, but it takes 95% effort to get them established.”

 

13.  Displacing the Role of the Church

            Leslie Newbigin writes that a “central theological reality is that the church is uniquely equipped to be the locus of missions because it is essentially missionary by its very nature.[1]  In other words, according to James Engel, “the church itself is the missionary reality that God sends into the world.  The church is to be more than just an institutional source from which funds are obtained to send forth missionaries.  The trend today has been for mission agencies to send out missionaries.  This, according to Engle and William Dyrness, has led to a present- day problem in regards to short-term missions:  short-term mission efforts are being initiated by para-church organizations which have little accountability to the church.[2] 

Conclusion:

The cattle are out!  But they can be corralled again.  But if it is not done soon cattle have a way of wandering and then becoming lost.    I do have great concerns regarding the way short term missions is going.   I also believe that it can be made right, but something must be done soon for this to happen.  There are three questions that need to be examined in greater detail. 

1.What is the biblical view of short term mission trips?

2.How should short term missionaries be selected?

3.How can short term mission trips better help the national church?

One may believe that I am against all short term mission trips.  I am not.  But I do believe that this type of ministry has gotten out of hand, kind of like the cattle that escaped from my brother-in-laws’ pen.  AND SOMETHING MUST BE DONE SOON!

 

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[1] Foolishness to the Greeks:The Gospel and Western Culture, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1986

[2] James Engel and Wm. Dryness pg 45.